The Truth about Being "Busy"

One of the favorite parts of my job is intersecting with a widely diverse set of organizations. Regardless of industry, company size, or country, inevitably one of the biggest management team complaints is "I don't have enough time!"

Busy managers. You probably work for one. Perhaps you are one. We're busy, but what about our effectiveness?

In A Bias for Action (Harvard Business School Publishing, 2004), authors Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal present staggering research about "busy managers". Their findings: Only 10 percent of managers in a typical organization get the work done.

What of the other 90%?

• 40% are considered Frenzied, distracted by treading water through all the demands of their day.
• 30% are Procrastinators, choosing to focus on being busy instead of being busy about work that matters.
• The remaining 20% are Detached, the people whose motto might be, "Whatever!"

10% of managers fit in the Purposeful category, those rare few who are highly focused, energetic, yet reflective and calm in the midst of chaos.

The 90% suffer from what the authors call active nonaction. Their focus is on activities not accomplishments, a dangerous formula when it comes to getting things done.

If you took an objective assessment of where you're at among the four styles, where would you land? I've spent some hard time in the Frenzied style, for sure, and it's pretty easy for me to slip into Procrastinator mode on big projects. How about you?

The authors suggest one of the secrets to moving from active nonaction to purposeful action is to understand the difference between motivation (which can easily change due to stimuli and perception) and willpower (a committed conviction to act). They go on to provide practical ideas to put this to work in the real world.

One idea from our Beyond Time Management: 5 Keys to Getting More Done with Less Stress keynote and workshop is to ask the following question when you're making a decision about what to focus on:

"If I do this, how will it help me ___________?"

You have to figure out what to put in the blank. For some coaching clients it has been:

• "deliver the project"
• "increase profitability"
• "get my promotion"
• "attract new customers"

I coach people to prominently post the question where they see it many times a day. It can help you keep the main thing the main thing!

I highly recommend A Bias for Action for your reading list (unless, of course, you're too frenzied to read a book)! :)

Labels: time management

posted by Andy at 9:12 PM